Ants, despite their small size, are among the most amazing and highly organized living beings on our planet. As direct descendants of ancient wasps that lived 110-130 million years ago, ants are the oldest inhabitants of Earth. The life of ants is full of mysteries and the incredible.
Did you know, for example, that ants are the only living beings on Earth, besides humans, that engage in the “domestication” of other living individuals (for ants, it’s aphids)? No? Then AdmiGram.com will tell you a few more amazing facts about ants that will surely delight you.
Scientific facts about ants that will astonish you
Ants are the most evolutionarily advanced organisms
In terms of their social and communal structure, ants are the most evolutionarily advanced family of living beings on Earth, excluding humans. Ants form complex families consisting of a dozen castes with clear division of duties and labor. This form of social organization allows ants to coordinate their actions in performing any tasks.
There are incredibly many ants on Earth
Based on the calculations of the most famous myrmecologist, Edward Wilson, there are up to 10 quadrillion ant individuals living on our planet. This incredibly huge number of ants is so vast that there are about a million of these insects for every living human. The total mass of all ants on Earth is approximately equal to the total mass of all humans.
Ants have their own legal and medical system
In ant communities, there is a kind of ‘legal system.’ For instance, if a healthy ant, whose responsibility is to search for and gather food, returns to the anthill several times with nothing, it faces ‘punishment.’ Soldier ants kill the worker ant and allow it to become a source of food. However, ants that have become incapacitated are treated differently. They are fed until the non-functional ants are able to request food, which they do by tapping their antennae on specific areas of a healthy ant’s head.
Ants never eat without permission
The main occupation of ants is searching for and storing food for ‘hard times.’ Ants never eat while outside the anthill. They bring all the food into their home, and only inside the anthill does the queen ant distribute the appropriate amount and type of food to each ant.
Ants are smarter than humans
Ants can confidently be considered the most intelligent beings on Earth. Ants have the highest neuron density per cubic unit of the brain among all living creatures, excluding humans. In the tiny head of an ant, there are approximately 250,000 brain cells. If ants could combine their ‘thinking power’ into one whole, they would have conquered the entire galaxy by now.
Ants engage in agriculture
Ants, alongside humans, are the only creatures that engage in conscious animal husbandry and agriculture. In specific areas of the anthill, there are actual small gardens. These gardens are fertilized, seeded, and then grown with fungi that provide ants with protein-rich food.
Every ant has a natural GPS
Ants never travel alone. If an ant gets lost due to circumstances, it unfailingly finds its way back to the anthill. Recently, scientists discovered that ants can navigate not only by following pheromone trails but also by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field.
Ant bodies contain complex control systems
Ants have special sensory organs in their bodies that react to the slightest changes in natural conditions, such as atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, etc. Thanks to this, ants can accurately predict any seasonal weather changes and atmospheric phenomena.
Ants live in an era of advanced slavery
Ants exhibit the human flaw of slavery. Slave-making ants attack and plunder neighboring ant nests, capturing ant pupae and bringing them back to their anthill. These pupae are raised into ‘slaves’ who will, in the future, perform the same tasks for the ‘slave-makers’ as they would in their native anthill.
Pension or special status
Scientists have not yet fully studied the fact that some ants are absolutely inactive in the anthill. Interestingly, these idle ants never start working, even if the number of worker ants sharply decreases. Some theories suggest that these ants have reached an advanced age and are on a kind of retirement. Other scientists claim that these are a special caste of ants distinguished by some extraordinary merits before the entire colony.
